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People pose for photographs with a statue of suffragist and women's rights campaigner Millicent Fawcett by British artist Gillian Wearing after it was unveiled in Parliament Square in London. The statue of women's rights campaigner Millicent Fawcett will stand alongside those of 11 men, including Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill, Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. | AFP-Adrian Dennis

The first statue of a woman in London's Parliament Square was unveiled on Tuesday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in Britain.

The monument shows Fawcett holding a placard reading "Courage Calls To Courage Everywhere", in tribute to a speech she gave upon the death of Suffragette Emily Wilding Davidson at the 1913 Epsom Derby horse race.

Fawcett herself was a Suffragist, part of a moderate movement that predated the more militant Suffragettes.

She is best known for her campaigns to improve women's opportunities in higher education and was a co-founder of the women-only Newnham College at Cambridge University.

She was also president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies between 1897 and 1901.

Fawcett died in 1929 aged 82.

The 11 pre-existing statues in the square are of former British prime ministers Churchill, David Lloyd George, Viscount Palmerston, the Earl of Derby, Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Peel and George Canning; South Africa's PM Jan Smuts and president Mandela; US president Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi.